Facilitated Naturalization

From
rewarding soldiers to attracting talent and investors, states have,
since ancient times, capitalized on the fact that their citizenship is a
‘good’ that is in demand. Ethnic considerations, close historical and
linguistic ties, and special merit or achievement frequently drive
policies in immigration and citizenship law and often constitute the
grounds for facilitated naturalization. Consider in this regard just a
few of the numerous examples testifying to the ethnic ideology behind
many states’ provision of facilitated naturalization: Germany’s policy
of granting immediate citizenship to repatriates; the Spanish laws
granting citizenship to descendants of those who fled during the Franco
regime and to descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled during the
15th century Inquisition; the Israeli ‘Law of Return’, which encourages
the immigration of Jews to Israel and bestows citizenship upon their
‘return’ to Israel regardless of their age, skill set, or economic
status; the preferential treatment of Macedonians in Bulgaria for the
purpose of citizenship; and the provision of Hungarian passports to
hundreds of thousands of Serbians and Romanians. In Croatia, a country
with a large diaspora both in Europe and overseas (predominantly in the
USA but also in Australia and New Zealand), it is possible to regain
citizenship immediately if Croatian descent can be demonstrated.
Relative to its size, Ireland has experienced one of the largest mass
emigrations in history and the country now has a very generous principle
of descent in place, one of the most liberal in the world, which allows
anyone with at least one grandparent born in Ireland to regain Irish
citizenship.

Much
like ethnicity and descent, military service frequently gives access to
privileged naturalization. This is the case with the recruitment of
foreign military personnel, for example, where citizenship is provided
in return for soldiers’ commitment. This practice has occurred
throughout history and it occurs in the present day in France through
the French Foreign Legion, and in the USA through the USA Army.
Qualified members of the USA Armed Forces can be exempt from certain
naturalization requirements, including the requirement of residence and
physical presence in the country under Sections 328 and 329 of the
Immigration and Nationality Act. This extraordinary naturalization
option serves as an incentive and a reward for performing military
service and risking one’s life.

Another
example of facilitated naturalization is the recruitment of elite
foreign athletes for national teams in the Olympic Games or in other
world sporting championships. These foreign athletes gain not only the
privilege of competing for a given state in international games but also
actual citizenship rights in that state in return for their efforts. As
famously named by Ayelet Shachar, such “Olympic citizenship” is focused
on the “spread of the talent-for-citizenship exchange”, be it in
sports, culture, science, or other fields. As an illustration of this
widespread practice, the French sports paper L’Équipe gave the following
account of the quarter-final of the European Table Tennis Championships
in October 2013: “In the women’s singles, two-time European champion Li
Jiao of the Netherlands (2007 and 2011), lost to Portugal’s Fu Yu. In
the semi-finals, Fu Yu will meet Sweden’s Li Fen.”

Top
foreign athletes who are of special interest to Germany are preferred
for naturalization based on an administrative directive, yet a maximum
of only 10 top athletes per year have been admitted in recent times.
Other countries are more lenient: at the World Athletics Championships
in 2005, for instance, Qatar was represented by almost a dozen elite
athletes born in Kenya and naturalized in Qatar. The USA, more than any
other country in the world, has gone out of its way to perfect the
technique of attracting accomplished athletes by offering them
citizenship in return for their pursuit of Olympic medals. Shortly
before the 2006 Winter Olympics, President Bush signed a bill that
granted citizenship to foreigners with extraordinary ability, allowing,
among others, Russian ice dancer Maxim Zavozin to represent the USA.
Zavozin thereafter became a Hungarian citizen, just in time to represent
Hungary at the Winter Olympics in 2010. Iceland naturalized the former
world chess champion Bobby Fischer in 2005, helping him escape custody
and possible extradition in Japan after USA authorities revoked the
American passport he was using to travel from Japan back to Iceland.

Other
talents, statuses, and sources of fame can also form the basis for
facilitated naturalization. In Denmark — a country that has one of the
most restrictive naturalization regimes in place today and that, as of
2000, naturalizes only people who speak Danish and know the history and
values of Denmark — the Australian bride of Crown Prince Frederik, Mary
Donaldson, received Danish citizenship as an engagement gift in 2003.
More recently, a young Malian migrant who rescued a child dangling from a
balcony was promised French citizenship, Ralph Fiennes received a
Serbian passport for filming in the country, and Afghan refugee Farhad
Nouri was offered Serbian citizenship because of his skillful
drawings — a privilege not extended to the many other refugees living in
the country. The list of grounds and examples is non-exhaustive, since
the discretion of states in the field of citizenship law is virtually
plenary, an extreme example being the conferral of Saudi Arabian
citizenship to a robot in 2017.

In
line with the above expressions of facilitated naturalization,
citizenship can also perform the function of recruiting overseas
investors, who are granted citizenship in exchange for their significant
foreign direct investment in (or other economic contribution to) the
country. Investors are often given an easier path to citizenship than
other candidates for naturalization. Applicants who pay do not have to
wait for years to be granted citizenship, although, crucially, they do
need to be suitably qualified and undergo strict due diligence checks.
‘First come first served’ is effectively displaced by the ethics of the
market: ‘You get what you pay for’. Ius doni, the acquisition of
citizenship by investment, is essentially, then, a fast-track procedure
for gaining citizenship, a form of facilitated naturalization that is
based on the ability and willingness to contribute economically.

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